An example of telephoto perspective in anime, courtesy of Shirobako

December 3, 2014

Back in The perspectives of the anicamera I
said that I didn't think I'd ever seen telephoto perspective used in
anime. It turns out that I'm wrong about that, as a recent shot in
Shirobako showed me. Let's start with the actual shot itself:

What we're seeing here is a classic telephoto perspective, where
everything is stacked up on top of each other and there's very little
distinction between close objects and further away ones. Notice, for
instance, how little the size of the traffic lights changes at each step
backwards into the scene, yet we're given the cue that they're not all
at the same distance from us because they partially occlude each other.
Even the features of the buildings in the background are relatively
large and so look relatively close to us.
This use of a stacked, dense perspective is deliberate and conscious on
the part of the show. Nothing that the scene needs to show forces this
view; in fact this shot is present almost entirely for its emotional
effect (the only thing that matters for the flow of the scene is that we
know the lights are red, to show why Miyamori stopped for a bit).

I suspect that this shot will feel familiar to you even if you haven't
watched Shirobako. I'm pretty sure that this kind of compressed view
into an urban distance cluttered with signs and wires and other parts of
the city is actually not an uncommon shot and may even be common enough
to be cliched. Certainly now that I've seen it here I'm sure I've also
seen it before, undoubtedly going back a long way. It just didn't come
to mind when I wrote the initial entry, partly
because this effect is somewhat more subtle than a clearly exaggerated
ultra wide angle view.

(I'm pretty sure that Neon Genesis Evangelion has similar shots and
I'm sure that NGE didn't originate it. In a way it's such an obvious
way of doing things if you want this effect on viewers.)